ExtraTorrent Blog

A 150-inch high-definiton plasma TV unveiled by Panasonic is the world’s largest to date, the Japanese consumer electronics company claimed Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show.

The plasma panel features an 8.84 million pixel image resolution.

Its screen is the equivalent of nine 50-inch sets, with an effective viewing area of 11 feet, the company said.

It’s a step up from Panasonic’s 103-inch version, which cost $70,000 when it launched.

The company did not say in a news release how much the 150-inch panel will cost.

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GeForce 9800 GX2

NVIDIA’s yet-to-be released GeForce 9800 GX2 in the “flesh.”

We reveal some of the specs and what should be expected.

The best way to think of the GeForce 9800 GX2 card is as an 8800 GPU that has been die shrunk to 65nm and placed in an SLI configuration in a “single” card.

The 9800 GX2 is very reminiscent of 7950 GX2 of days past.

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will launch in late February or early March as it now stands and will replace the 8800 Ultra (single GPU) card in NVIDIA’s high-end product line up.

The 9800 GX2 is said to be at least 30% faster than a 8800 Ultra.

While it is not clear from the pictures below, we are told it will support “Quad SLI.”

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This is something I found but happened and was reported last year, but not here.

eBay helped to shut down a Russian Web site last week (way back in 2006) that was offering to sell stolen customer account information for as little as $5 each.

Armed with an eBay customer’s login and password, a fraudster could post items for sale, collect payments, and then never deliver the goods.

The site was also offering to sell a handful of PayPal accounts.

The site was inaccessible Friday morning, but Alex Eckelberry, president of security vendor Sunbelt, posted screen captures in his blog that appeared to show account information for sale from customers in the U.K., Germany, and Australia.

The site preferred accounts that were used infrequently, meaning a user would take longer to notice any suspicious activity, and asked a higher price for accounts with good feedback ratings. Prices ranged from $5 to $25 per account.

EBay reiterated its guidelines for customers to avoid having their data stolen: Be extremely wary of e-mail that ask you to update personal account information, download eBay’s toolbar with software that detects fraudulent eBay and PayPal sites, and report suspicious e-mail.

It’s quite common to buy anything from hacked user account on estores to nice ICQ or MSN numbers…

Thanks to our various sources for this.

Apple’s latest offering in the arena of operating systems, Leopard has broken all previous sales records.

Apple’s efforts to provide new and innovative things to the people has touched one more landmark as the estimates show that the first month sales for the latest operating system “Leopard” are up by 32.8 percent dollar volume and unit volume up 20.5 percent.

These data are on the basis of the comparison made to sales of “Tiger” in its first month. Leopard is the fifth OS in the Mac OS 10 series and its shipping started on October 25 all over the world.

The new copy of Leopard costs $129 for a single user and $199 for a “family pack” that can be installed on as many as five computers in a single household.

It has no variations in the price range for different versions unlike Microsoft which launched Vista in the price range of $100 and $260 for its versions- Home Basic, Premium, Business and Ultimate.

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The 1394 Trade Association announced today a new specification, one which will quadruple the speed of FireWire to 3.2 Gbps, or a theoretical maximum 400 MB/s transfer rate.

Dubbed “S3200″, the faster communication technology is fully backward compatible and builds upon the existing 1394b standard ratified in 2002.

S3200 will also use the same cabling and equipment as FireWire 800, making for fast adoption and industry uptake.

S3200 will begin the ratification process in January, 2008, and is expected to be ratified in February, 2008. FireWire 800 products today deliver 90 MB/s of sustainable throughput.

With the anticipated 3% overhead, FireWire 3200 could deliver nearly 390 MB/s of usable data bandwidth, though a straight-forward 400% increase would be 360 MB/s.

That is enough to drive full 1920 x 1200 HDTV signals at up to 50 fps.

FireWire hard drives can move data on FireWire 800 nearly three times as fast as with USB 2.0.

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Malware researchers at Prevex have highlighted what they are calling a ‘massive growth’ in the number of PCs harboring rootkit infections.

More than 725,000 PCs were scanned using the Prevx CSI malware scanner over a two-month period. Of the around 291,000 users who scanned their PCs during October 2007, some form of spyware or malware was found on one in six.

Significantly, although rootkits were detected on 15.6% of PCs during October 2007, that figure had risen to 22% by early December.

Rootkits are often ‘dropped’ or buried by other infections.

They then modify a PC’s operating system to hide themselves from both the user and any security products installed on the computer.

By so doing rootkits can allow criminals to remotely monitor, record, modify, steal and transfer data from the victim’s PC.

Some rootkits are undetectable by conventional antivirus and antispyware applications. A tech-savvy user may believe his or her computer is ‘clean’, and unwittingly pass on increasingly valuable personal and financial data.

Since 1 December 2007, 114,891 new users have run Prevx CSI with rootkit-detection features enabled. Of those PCs, 1,678 had what Prevx describes as ’significant rootkit infections’.

That equates to 1.46% or approximately one in 70 systems, which is almost 15 times higher than the one in 1,000 rootkit-infected PCs previously estimated by industry experts.

Thanks to PC World for this.

The beleaguered music industry is beginning to show more enthusiasm for free, advertising-supported business models.

The latest sign: Universal Music Group has agreed to provide its songs to online social network imeem.

Imeem now boasts deals with all four major record companies, including Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Group, all of which have already inked deals with the social network.

It’s a sharp turnaround from earlier this year, when none of the majors were willing to sign on to imeem’s new ad-supported interactive service.

In fact, Warner sued imeem, arguing that by allowing its members to upload and share MP3s of Warner music, it was infringing on its copyrights.

But in July, Warner dropped its suit and struck a partnership with imeem under which the major label allowed free, full-song streaming of its music in exchange for a cut of imeem’s advertising revenue.

Sony-BMG Music reached a similar deal with imeem in September, followed by EMI in October and now Universal.

A source familiar with the Universal pact said the label is also receiving a small payment each time one of its songs is streamed.

Fueling the shift is the music industry’s continuing struggle with sliding sales of compact discs, which still account for the vast majority of their recorded-music sales.

Revenue from paid music downloads continues to grow, but isn’t close to making up the difference.

Imeem claims to have 19 million users; deals with major labels and leading independent music companies will help it grow that audience further.

Finally some good news!!

Thanks to Forbes, eweek for this. 

Japanese electronics maker says new Portege is the first tablet PC with a backlit LED display. Toshiba announced on Monday the introduction of the Portege M700, a tablet PC which it claims is the first to incorporate a touch screen LED display.

Most laptops and tablet PCs use LCD (liquid crystal) displays, which are generally cheaper to manufacture but are susceptible to glare and awkward viewing angels.

By using LED (light emitting diode) technology, the Portege M700 produces bright image quality even in bright sunshine and from different angels.

The 12.1-inch WXGA display is meant to mirror the layout of a standard piece of paper for tablet fans who like to the ability to manipulate documents through the touch screen interface.

The M700 also uses the Intel Core 2 Duo and the Santa Rosa edition of Centrino. Other features include a DVD SuperMulti Drive, 1.3 megapixel webcam, a shock absorbing design, a spill-resistant keyboard and “sleep-and-charge” USB ports that can charge compatible electronics (cellphones, MP3 players) whether the system is on or off.

The Portege M700 retails for $1,800 (2.2 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, 160GB drive, Intel GMA).

Thanks to infosync for this.

Christmas time is a great moment to gather with your family, spread the love and also spend loads of money.

And that’s where advertisements come into the play. Microsoft Corp. began on Monday to place advertisements on its U.S. MSN Mobile page, moving into the nascent mobile phone advertising business.

Computer-based Web usage dwarfs mobile Internet use in the United States, but companies like Microsoft, Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. see advertising tied to mobile phones as potentially more lucrative than the $40 billion online advertising market.The company will start with advertisements from Bank of America, Paramount Pictures and Jaguar.

Microsoft already sells mobile phone advertisements in Belgium, France, Spain, Japan and the United Kingdom.

Microsoft’s idea is to offer customers the option to place advertising across a wide range of platforms from the Internet to mobile phones to its Xbox Live online video game service.

Microsoft also plans to bring new features such as astrology and movie ticket buying to its MSN Mobile page. You can’t hide from the advertisements anywhere in these days…

Thanks to Reuters for this.